


regeneration

by schweet_heart



Series: Biggles Fic [2]
Category: Biggles Series - W. E. Johns
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cousin Incest, Cousins, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9788105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: “Thought I was done for at last, did you?” Biggles smiled faintly. “I don’t mind telling you, I thought that more than once myself. And yet, here I am, alive and well.” He gestured with his free arm, then winced. “Well. Mostly.”Missing scene fromBiggles Fails to Return.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For wateroverstone, who asked ;)

 

 

Biggles was leaning against a low wall when Algy emerged, a cigarette in one hand, looking far too thin in his white singlet and dark trousers. His hair was tousled, giving him a debauched air that was incongruous with the blood-stained bandage that could just be seen looping around his chest and shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Algy asked him quietly, crossing the intervening distance to stand beside him. Biggles didn’t stir at his approach. 

“Bit shaky on my pins, but otherwise sound,” he said. “The Princess is a good nursemaid.”

He took a drag on his cigarette, and Algy inhaled the secondhand smoke, the scent of flowers that was heavy in the night air. “You like her.”

“She saved my life.”

“Yes, but — I mean…” There was no good way to blurt it out, so he gave up. “We should all be grateful to her.”

“I certainly am. She could have got clean away but she chose to risk her own safety to preserve mine. Not many women would have done the same in her place.”

“I suppose.” 

Algy refrained from adding that there were many men who would have, had they the opportunity. Biggles knew that; knew, too, that there were no limits to which Algy would not go to save his life, if it came down to it. He’d proven as much again and again. And he knew Biggles was grateful for it. So it was ridiculous to stand here in the quiet of the dusk, with his best friend miraculously restored beside him, and feel cheated, as if the woman had beaten him in some indefinable way. It wasn’t her fault that she was a woman and he was just a man.

Biggles was watching him, his face thrown halfway into shadow by the setting sun.

“Penny for ‘em,” he said softly.

Algy started, then shook his head. “You'd be getting a bad bargain. I was just thinking how—” He hesitated. “How glad I am we found you. For a while there we thought…”

“Thought I was done for at last, did you?” Biggles smiled faintly. “I don’t mind telling you, I thought that more than once myself. And yet, here I am, alive and well.” He gestured with his free arm, then winced. “Well. Mostly.”

Unable to resist, Algy stepped forward and touched the ribs beneath his shirt, laying his palm over the place where he guessed the bullet had entered. “Does it hurt much?”

Biggles turned. They were so close now that Algy could feel his breath on his cheek, feel the warmth of him in the cool evening. The cigarette hung unheeded from Biggles’ fingertips, flaking burning ash into the air. 

“Not when you do that,” Biggles said. His voice was so quiet Algy almost thought he’d imagined it, until Biggles leaned into his hand and somehow what had been a simple touch became a caress, and then Biggles’ head tipped forward and they were kissing, Algy’s lips opening in surprise to the taste of smoke and leather and _Biggles_ , the dearest friend in the world.  

When Biggles broke away, he wasn’t looking at Algy. “I suppose you think I must be off my rocker,” he said. He lifted the cigarette to his lips and inhaled brusquely, then looked down in surprise at finding it was almost gone.

“I suppose,” Algy answered cautiously. “You do seem to have come over rather…It’s only that I wasn’t expecting it,” he added, feeling the need to clarify. “And that…I don’t know what it meant.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” Biggles confessed. He scuffed his boot, then looked up at Algy with an expression that reminded him of Biggles as a boy, trying to appear chastised but not entirely sure he was sorry for causing so much mischief. Algy sucked on his lower lip, tasting Biggles there, and smiled.  

“You’re quite ridiculous, you know,” he said. He stepped into Biggles’ space and held onto him, gently so as not to jostle his injury. “It’s all right. I thought you were dead.”

“And that excuses anything, does it?”

“Some things.” Algy exhaled. “This.”

Biggles nodded, and angled his head so that his chin was on Algy’s shoulder. Biggles was slightly the taller of the two, but Algy was stockier, and seemed less inclined to blow away in a stiff breeze. “Perhaps I should get myself presumed dead more often.”

“Please don’t. Poor old Raymond would do his nut.”

“Well, if Raymond wouldn’t like it.” Biggles’ tone was dry. 

“And Ginger. Ginger wouldn’t like it either.” 

“Hm.” They were pressed close together now, there in the twilight, Biggles’ free hand on his waist. It should have been strange, and yet it seemed to be quite fitting; the whole thing felt to Algy like a particularly lucid dream. “And you?”

Algy shifted his weight. “Do you really have to ask?”

Biggles pulled back to look at him, his grey eyes serious. “I suppose not. But a bloke likes to hear it now and then.”

“All right, then.” Algy leaned up; kissed him. “I would very much appreciate it if you could refrain from dying — presumably or otherwise — for the foreseeable future. I know better than to ask you to promise forever,” he added, wryly. “Some lies even I can’t swallow.”

Biggles, clever as he was, did not miss the hint beneath that layered statement, and winced. “I don’t suppose it would help if I said I really did expect to be coming back?”

“Not in the slightest,” Algy informed him. “Although I suppose I shall forgive you eventually.”

“I suppose you shall have to,” Biggles said, sounding amused. “You’ve never been the sort to hold a grudge. Fly off the handle, maybe. Go haring off on some reckless crusade to avenge your precious daisies, definitely.”

“They were sunflowers,” Algy corrected, with immense dignity. “Must we have this argument again?”

“We will continue having this argument until it comes to a satisfactory conclusion,” Biggles said. He gave a snort of disgust. “ _Flowers_.”

“I’ve gone through worse for lesser causes,” Algy pointed out. “Finding you, for instance.”

“Have you, indeed.” Biggles dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it out, then lit another. “Well, in that case.”

They did not go inside again for some time after that, and if the ruins of an old village were hardly the warmest location after dark, it must be said that neither of them felt it.


End file.
